Nascent Darkness
by Constipated Ape
Summary: There is light shed upon machinations previously unknown, new worlds are found, as well as new perils. Starts after KH2 ends. Centered around Riku. However, if you are looking for sappy stuff, this is not the place to look. Serious fanfiction, with death


Hello everybody, this is my first foray into actually writing a fanfiction, much less Kingdom Hearts fanfiction. Not to say that I automatically think that all Kingdom Hearts fanfiction is bad. However, I have not found many to my liking, in other words, one that does not either stick to the sappiness of the original story, or one that does not have yaoi. I have now taken it upon my humble self to try to correct that. But please do not stop reading because of my arrogance. Instead, please continue reading, and enjoy the show...And please review if you have anything to say.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, or any other of the series which I am unable to disclose the titles as of yet...

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Riku was not an exceptionally angry person. Far from it. He actually liked to consider himself a rather unfortunate, but ultimately cool-headed individual. Yet, when he saw beings of evil leap out at him,seemingly out of nowhere, when he was just enjoying a peaceful relaxing drink on the beach... he became justifiably aggravated.

"We got trouble," he yelled in a hope that the others would receive warning, as he drew his keyblade, the Way to the Dawn. As the bipedal beings dashed towards him, he noted in the back of his mind that he had never seen Heartless or Nobodies like that before, before quickly dismissing the notion and throwing himself into the battle.

He lunged toward the closest enemy and brought his blade down in a diagonal slash. The enemy clumsily parried the strike with its sword, as one of its allies shrieked and leaped into the air towards Riku, bringing its weapon screaming down towards him. Riku, briefly faltering due to a sudden jolt of pain in his leg, barely managed to leap out of the way of the oversize weapon before it smashed into the ground, sending plumes of sand everywhere. "_Shit_," he thought, "_I still haven't completely healed..._" He felt the hairs of back of his neck stand up, and immediately thrust his keyblade behind him, right into the gut of the advancing foe. Stunningly, instead of the enemy merely losing some of its essence and disappearing into immaterial wisps, it managed to let out a quick "Urk!" before it slid off the now blood-slicked sword and collapsed onto the ground, spurting greenish fluid from its midsection.

"What!" he exclaimed. _"How could they bleed like that? That's almost human...but then..."_ He no longer had time to think as he was rushed by the three remaining enemies. "Damn," he cursed before enacting a flying kick that hit one in the throat, crushing its larynx, then kicked off and sliced another's head off. He approached the last foe who, surprisingly, dropped its weapon and fell to its knees, pleading, "Mighty man-man no killee little me!" in a reedy voice. Riku started at this, saying, "What are you?..." then turning around upon hearing the cry of "Riku! You okay?" in the distance. The next thing he knew he felt a mighty blow right at his previous wound from the fight with Xehanort's Nobody, and collapsed onto the ground. He then heard a triumphant squeal.

"Stupid man-man be stupid, turn back to me! Me mighty Lizalfo!" shrieked the reptilian looking enemy. It followed up the claim by plunging its sword straight into Riku's lower back, as if planting a standard on a battlefield. For an instant, Riku's entire world ignited in searing pain as he gasped for air. The gloating reptile stabbed him again and again, shrieking, "Me get reward! Me, me, me!" As Riku's consciousness spiraled into the depths of his mind, he heard the cries of his friend, muffled as if from a large distance, which grew by each moment. "_So, it ends..." _Had he the strength he would have laughed at the irony. "B_ut no...not like this..I can't let it end like this!"_

The lizalfo, crowing in triumph over the "stupid man-man", was completely oblivious to the waves of malevolent energy pouring off Riku's prone, battered body, and to the sneer on Riku's face as he slowly woke. The first clue the reptilian humanoid got that all was not well was the "corpse's" hand lashing back, grabbing ahold of the embedded sword, before blindly launching its own sword upwards into the gut of the lizalfo. Riku grunted, and pulled the sword of out of his own back with an ominous "slurp" and tossed it to the side. He then turned his head painfully sideways to the gasping, impaled lizalfo and wheezily proclaimed, "It takes more than that to kill me, asshole" With that, he gave the keyblade a wrench, and yanked it out. The dying lizalfo toppled down onto Riku, and was barely conscious enough to feel Riku's hand covering its face, before feeling something akin to what he imagined his soul being ripped out. It turns out, that analysis wasn't to far off.

Riku sighed in relief as stolen life energy washed over him,repairing his various wounds which would have felled lesser men in seconds. He knew that he didn't really have any idea what exactly he did, except it was as if he drew towards him all the power, the energy, the willpower he could get. He had done it on pure instinct, in a wild drive to survive that ignominious demise. Surprisingly, something had worked, since the once debilitating pain was now subsiding to a dull throb. With an almighty grunt, he managed to push the strangely desiccated body off of him and roll over onto his back. He could tell that even though he was no longer in imminent danger of death, the skirmish had really weakened him. In the middle of pondering such matters, he heard Sora running up to him, gasping, "Riku! No! Are you all right?!"

"_What does it look like," _Riku thought,_ "I just got the shit kicked out of me!" _Outwardly however, he smiled weakly at his friend _"_I'm fine...now give me a hand up, careful though." Sora helped Riku up, and started leading him to the docks. "What happened back there?" Riku then told him the story up to when he got to the enemies actually losing blood and collapsing onto the ground. At that point Sora interrupted that he didn't know Heartless or Nobodies could do anything like that.

Riku wearily looked at him after Sora proudly stated the obvious, and said, "... that also begs a disturbing question: they weren't Heartless or anything like that, so how did they get here? They seemed far too stupid to use even a gummi ship, much less use the portals... But who would help such creatures...?"

Sora's face contorted in frustration. "Do you think they could have been Maleficent?"

"No, don't think so. Last we saw of her, she was gonna get slaughtered by all those nobodies. Besides, even if she did survive, she would go more for some plan that involved a lot of Heartless cannon fodder. These guys, no matter how stupid, aren't limitless, unlike Heartless. They are flesh and blood, sentient like us...on a related note... I just killed real flesh and blood for the first time. It actually doesn't feel that much different from eliminating Heartless..."

At this, it finally penetrated to Sora's mind that Riku had indeed just killed living things, things that could have maybe been convinced to stop fighting them and be their friends! "But Riku, they didn't have to fight us! You could have not fought them!"

Riku blankly stared at Sora. "Sora, I know that you are optimistic sometimes... but they were trying to make me about a head shorter. It was sort of obvious..." Sora quietly said, "So now you will kill real people just to survive?"

Riku sighed. "Sora, what would you rather have? Me lying there dead on the ground and the beasts possibly running around killing others, or me alive and them dead without any casualties on our side?" Sora 'reluctantly' picked the latter. "Fine...but what did you do to that last one? It looks as if something really evil happened to it..." He then turned around and pointed out the subject of his query. Riku had to agree, it did look pretty bad. The body looked much more thinner than the others, although initially it had not. Its face was frozen in a grimace, as if it had gone through hell in the seconds it had taken to die.

"I don't really know what I did to it, but I have to admit it felt good..." he admitted. " If I could learn to do it at will, then enemies like that would no longer pose a threat to me," he mused "nobody would ever be able to control me or defy me..." Riku heard Sora's footsteps suddenly halt, and turned around to inquire as to what was wrong. It was only due to Riku's strange gait that he narrowly avoided a keyblade slice to his neck.

"What the fuck," said Riku as he stumbled backwards. "Sora! Stop!" Sora vacantly stared at Riku, with not a hint of recognition in his eyes, as he settled into a fighting stance. Riku cursed as he materialized his own keyblade and parried one of Sora's blows. Sora followed up with a powerful thrust, next a low chop to the knees, both of which were barely deflected by his shaken friend who never counterattacked, worried he might kill him. Riku, in between frantic blocking, got a glimpse of a ship coming in fast from the atmosphere. Riku briefly threw up a weak wall of fire, then used the brief obstacle to gain a little bit of distance between him and his unexpected assailant. A bright flare of fire rose from Riku's position like a flare as he tried to get the ship's attention, and hopefully, aid. It had crossed his mind that it could be filled with enemies, but then again, it didn't seem as if he would survive this fight against Sora when he was alone!

However, by this time Sora had gotten past the flaming barrier and was dashing towards Riku, stil displaying no discernible emotion. Luckily for Riku, the ship fired a calculated blast right between the 2 combatants, causing Sora to briefly hold back as he analyzed the new variables which would affect the outcome of the seeming betrayal.

Upon coming to the conclusion that the new arrival could potentially tip the scales in Riku's favor, he started loosing bolt after bolt of fiery energy at the ship. It started taking hits from the individually weak, but deadly en masse, projectiles, causing mildly distressing damage. The ship commenced weaving around to avoid the anti aircraft fire, but still stayed the course. Eventually as it got into the range where it would suffer catastrophic damage, and 2 figures fell from the low flying craft. Riku quickly recognized them as Goofy and Donald. Never before had he been so happy to see the bumbling duo. "Stop him! He's gone insane!"

They immediately started running towards Sora, yelling nigh incoherently to him to stop. This proved to be their undoing. When they got close to the seemingly deranged "hero of light", he launched himself towards the pair, brandishing his sword. Donald briefly had a look of surprise on his face before the previously unthinkable happened: his head was changed into a concave shape by being bashed in by the flat of Sora's blade. Goofy, usually the"slow" one, realized that unless he posed some resistance Sora was going to kill him. He brought up his shield just in time, the keyblade bouncing off the hard side of the shield.

...To Be Continued...

END OF CHAPTER NOTE: Please tell me if you think it should not be such a mature rating so far, since I am being on the safe side to avoid the purgings of this site. Also, this is an extremely unpolished version of the story, as I have not consulted the psychotic KH-obsessed bitch whom I also call a friend about said characters and plot. On a COMPLETELY unrelated note, thank Heart of Twilight for helping me with this story... Lastly, this is far from the kind of length of a chapter I wanted it to be, but I am losing patience with the daily tribulations of life in general, including writing fanfictions about fandoms I do not have a great surplus of knowledge of.


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